This is the Story about This.

 

Seems a lot of my best stories begin in a bar.

Tony and I went to Bar Shiru to listen Lyz Luke play a vinyl only evening of her choosing.

I knew her from being a music producer here in West Oakland where she  would gather bay area musicians to interpret a single track from an iconic older record.  Each group/person got one song to do and then she would record them doing their track in order of the original. I have maybe a half dozen CD's she's done.     Undercover Presents

Bar Shiru is a listening bar, a monumental record collection along with a very worthy stereo system.  You can talk in there and still hear the music exquisitely.

Sitting at her table I met Aakash.  His story is he got together with some other like minded people and as a group, they started gathering/acquiring old electronic analogue music instruments, restoring if needed and then used as a community resource in venues around town.

Keys to the City.   Absolutely love the name.

Cool as hell I thought.

This story is getting too long so I'm cutting it off here.  I said I would make some organ benches for him.  And that's the story about this.

I turned the apron of the bench into sheet music of sorts, a little bit. Maybe a bit too much?

I'd say 85% of the making of the bench was spent on the f-holey looking member.

I could have cut it out of one piece of wood on the bandsaw but thought I wanted the grain lines matching the curve somewhat.  So I did bent laminations.

Probably didn't need to use steam as the layers were pretty thin but rather than risk failure I did a pre-bend on them heated and wet.

The jig.

The steamer.

The pre-bend in progress.

The resulting groups.

The glue up.

Ok so here's an egg crate shot of the cross members.

 How I held the curving member so I could WoodRat the joint in them.

Various stages of joint fitting.

Used the WoodRat as a crude lathe to make the bottom part of the leg round.

Aprons held with dowels.  80 of them.

Gluing of the aprons and then those onto the legs.

Leather top.  That's analogue.

To reverse design something, the corners are mirroring the f-hole members.

Last night we had a "one for ages" jam and tried to inject some first music into the bench before it leaves.

I hope you follow the links at the top.  Those are why you go to a bar to find a story there.